The Bricks That Built the Houses by Kate Tempest Read Free Book Online Page A

kisses Harry’s cheek slowly, close to the mouth. Half her lips touch Becky’s like it’s no big deal. Harry’s face is on fire, the flames are rising and obscuring her view. She tries to act natural.
    ‘See you later then,’ she says, keeping her tone as bubbly as she can, aware of the sphinx-like gaze of Gloria,wondering if somehow Gloria can see the flames that are engulfing her head.
    ‘Yeah,’ Becky says, looking back over her shoulder, already walking away. ‘Bye, Harry . . .’ and Harry’s sure that was a wink she gave her. A dark flash of lips and winking eyes. She stands, stunned, watching until she loses them in the bodies. A slim wrist reaches out and grabs a wine bottle from the bar, sparkling bracelet flashing beneath the lighting, and then they’re gone.
    She breathes fast and shallow. Pats the flames down with quick hands. The embers crackle. She goes to touch the earlobe that Becky had touched, but finds that it’s melted, only her earrings remain, two little hoops spinning round nothing. She looks up and sees that Leon is staring at her from the other side of the room, suddenly visible, shaking his head, smiling to himself. Harry straightens her shirt, meets Leon’s eyes, sips her drink.
Right then
. Her legs feel miles away from the floor. The walls are closer every second. Each breath is a thrown dart that has to be wrenched from the board before she can throw again. She turns from the bar towards the tables in the corner and walks over to the man standing with his legs wide apart, shifting his weight backwards and forwards.
    ‘Morris. Hello.’ Harry speaks gently, businesslike. ‘Good to see you again.’
    ‘Harry! Glad you could make it.’ Morris grins emptily down into Harry’s face and places a large hand on the small of her back, holding her hip. ‘Follow me.’

THE TRUTH
    The flat Becky shares with Charlotte sits in a neat, friendly block behind Deptford High Street where everybody has plants on their windowsills and the communal gardens are bright with tulips and bluebells. Beyond the gardens though, out on the street, the colour pales dramatically. Everything is pigeon grey and flecked with spit stains and dried-up chewing gum.
    Somewhere nearby two women scream at one another and their voices bounce along the empty roads. Overhead a freight train rattles the bones of the bridge, while down dark alleys and behind closed doors, adolescent affirmations are being punched out, one wet slap of bodily fluid at a time.
    The girls clamber out of the cab. The rowing women are in full throttle now and no words are discernible in the shrieking waves. The road is strewn with picked-clean rib bones, and the faint smell of boozy piss mixes with the sweet rot of skunk smoke.
    As the girls climb the steps, their voices ricochet off the concrete walls and flood the block with their presence, bringing the old man downstairs to his doorway to stare disapprovingly in their general direction.
    In the front room a tiny yellow sofa squeezes itself along the back wall, a little square coffee table stands before it; along the opposite wall there are a couple of shelving units with a stereo on and some books and the telly. If there are any more than two people in the room, it feels like being held inside a mouth full of too many teeth.
    They sit on the yellow sofa and listen to nineties R’n’B. They sniff the rest of Becky’s gram and talk the same shit that they talk every time an evening ends this way.
    Just before four, Becky heads to her room. She lies in her bed, brain like a sack of electric drills, all switched on and roaring. Harry keeps floating back into her mind: her funny stance, her too-long arms, the way she kept pulling her hair around and it kept springing back to being exactly where it was. Becky’s mind is wild as a dark sea, foaming, tugging lost things down into its depths. Which one is the real one? The professional dancer who never complains? The south London girl sniffing gack